By Rebecca A. Schriner | Echo
Christmas should be "The Most Wonderful Time" of year. You're supposed to "Deck the Halls" as a family and venture out on a "Sleigh Ride" with your "Santa Baby."
And you're more than welcome to do that-on Christmas.
Some may call me a Grinch, but I just don't like Christmas music. My youngest sister used to play the same classic Christmas tunes around the house from October to February every year. It wore me out. By the time Christmas rolled around, I was completely out of the holiday spirit.
My roommate adores Christmas music. Perhaps even more, she adores annoying me. I often came home from work in the middle of September to find her listening to it.
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I want to wake up on Christmas Eve to snow and "Mary, Did You Know?" and feel like it's time for celebration. I want to sing Christmas carols with my cousins, play festive music while I bake gingerbread cookies, and listen to music through my reindeer earbuds while I shovel snow. I can't imagine waking up in the middle of summer to "Silver Bells" or "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer."
Sure, I may be dreaming about a "White Christmas" like the next student, but I plan to hold in my yuletide cheer until it's actually Christmas.
"All I Want for Christmas" this year is for people to respect the sanctity of these holiday songs. They should be played at holiday events and, at maximum, a week before Christmas. Even if we should reflect on Jesus' life all year, Christmas needs to be a special time when our Savior's birth is in focus. Let's save the songs for that.
By Lauryn Chan | Contributor
Close your eyes and imagine with me for a moment. A grueling fall semester has just drawn to a close. Your finals-however brutal-are finished, for better or for worse. And now, temporarily unburdened from academic responsibilities, you can truly melt into your armchair, enjoy a mug of cocoa and prop your feet up in front of the fire as snow falls softly outside your window. You can focus on family, enjoy the snow and, most importantly, marvel and rejoice over the birth of our Savior.
Now imagine experiencing that level of peace and contentment year-round. Christmas music takes me there; transports me to my mental happy place. It refreshes the joy and peace of Christ's redemptive work, even when I feel overwhelmed and berated by responsibilities and emotional baggage. It poignantly reminds me of God's enormous and incomprehensible love for us and the joyous arrival of his son. This is why, despite great opposition, I listen to Christmas music year-round.
Christmas music is festive and makes people happy. Honestly, it's just good music that puts me in a positive mood while I hammer out otherwise tedious projects and papers.
More importantly, I am strongly opposed to limiting the celebration of our Lord and Savior's miraculous and earth-changing birth to the few measly weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas Day. If we truly believe a thousand years are not enough to proclaim God's praise, I am highly dubious that four weeks are enough to sing of Christ's joyous arrival on earth.
On top of this, we don't know for certain when Jesus was born. You can't claim I'm listening to Christmas music in the wrong season. For all we know, you are.
This last point is perhaps marginally less biblical than the rest. My enjoyment of Christmas music year-round is partially due to the annoyance it causes my roommate and my boyfriend. If I'm being perfectly honest, I get a bit of sadistic pleasure out of exasperating the people I love. We all have our flaws; I just don't consider my love of Christmas music to be one of them. My cruelty, on the other hand, may be another story and perhaps something to be addressed at a later date.
Perhaps you could argue that my reasoning is faulty or I have defied logic. But do you know what also defies logic? A holy, infinite God seeing us tiny, insignificant and utterly hard-hearted creatures and extending the ultimate mercy through the sending of his son, purely out of inexplicable love for us.
Reflect on that the next time you feel inclined to protest Christmas music in July, you pagan!
